Welding Fabrication Standards - EWF

Welding Fabrication Standards Page 29
Location and frequency of such inspections and/or tests will depend on the contract and/or product
standard, on the welding process and on the type of construction. As a general rule the state of
inspection and testing of the welded product have to be indicated in some way. Such a means
shall be adequate to the type of product; as an example, a Fabrication and Control Plan may be
required for big products (on which the testing activities are marked); while routing cards or
confined space inside the manufacturing plant shall be sufficient for small series product to indicate
the inspection and testing status. Table 5 reports a typical chart for tests to be carried out before,
during and after welding operations.
In some situations, the signature of the inspector 7 shall be required in order to enhance the
traceability of the welding and related process activities. Moreover, the reference number of the
relevant test report shall be included, if required.
All the procedures or instructions relevant to inspection and testing shall be made available to the
inspection personnel, and properly controlled.
As to NDT, testing activities (method, technique and extension) shall be carried out in
consideration of and in accordance with the quality level of the product. Some of those parameters
are reported in the manufacturing codes, where the designer chooses the class of the weld taking
into consideration all of the above mentioned factors. All these aspects should be considered
during the design review phase by the welding coordinator.
Figure 9 – Welding gauge for Visual Inspection of joints
7 For some tests or checks (e.g. welding parameters, dimensional checks, visual testing, etc.) the welder or
welding operator itself shall be considered as inspector.
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